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The members of OPEC - Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela - pump a combined total of 30 million barrels a day.
And OPEC president Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahd al-Sabah visited Moscow this week to persuade Russia, the world's second biggest oil producer after Saudi Arabia - it produces nine million barrels a day - to cooperate with the cartel, in order to avoid flooding the market.
OPEC, according to al-Sabah, would be willing to withdraw up to two million barrels a day from the market if springtime is warm as forecast, which would lead to a drop in demand in the second quarter of 2006.
But Ramírez asserted that "the responsibility for supplies and prices cannot only fall on the shoulders of producers."
"Importer countries, whether industrialized or emerging economies, should rationalize consumption," he argued.
In addition, "the burden of internal taxes is overwhelming," he said. "In Europe, for example, taxes account for 70 percent of the final price for energy paid by consumers."
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Alí Rodríguez, a former OPEC secretary-general, said that "in this respect, France is more of an 'oil country' than those of the Persian Gulf, because the French state obtains more revenues from oil than the countries in that region."
And in small countries like those of Central America, whose oil bill has doubled over the past three years to nearly five billion dollars a year, one out of every three dollars paid by consumers in gas stations goes to taxes.
Ramírez also stated that "the markets cannot be stabilized if political instability is provoked in producer countries, because that gives rise to high costs and uncertainty." He pointed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the George W. Bush administration's pressure on Iran and open hostility towards the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chávez.
This year, international oil relations shifted after the Chávez administration reached cooperation agreements based on oil supplies. Mexico also took steps in that direction.
Chávez launched Petrocaribe, an alliance under which Venezuela will provide 198,000 barrels a day of oil to 13 Caribbean nations, with financing for up to 40 percent of the bill. In addition, Caracas will accept payment in the form of products or services.
Mexico, meanwhile, reached an agreement with its Central American neighbors to build a new refinery and gas pipeline in that region.
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